Centralized Fat Status of Adolescent Girls in Saudi Arabia in Comparison to the United Kingdom Reference Data

To measure the anthropometric profile of Jeddah adolescent girls based on their waist circumference (WC) status. To identify the centralized fat status of participants in comparison to the United Kingdom’s reference data. Measurement of WC for 1519 female adolescents (13 to 18 years) was taken. Construction of Z-scores and percentile and smoothing for the all taken WC measurements using the LMS methodology that summarizes the changing distribution by three curves representing the median, coefficient of variation and skewness, The UK reference data was used for comparisons. The percentage of girls with waist-circumference scores of ≥ 90th percentile was the highest (9.7%) among 13-years old girls, compared to other age groups. Girls who aged 17 years had the highest proportion (36.7%; 98 out of 370) of WC scores ≤ 10th percentile. The mean WC for Saudi girls in all ages (13 to 17 years) was above the 75th percentile. In comparison with the waist circumference ‘percentile curves’ for British girls aged 5.0 ± 16.9 years, the mean WC for Saudi girls in the all studied ages was above the 75th percentile. In comparison to the UK female population, Jeddah adolescent girls had a higher WC among all compared ages, and 20% of girls in Saudi Arabia were centrally obese. The study has generated imperative data on values for the percentile WC of adolescent girls in Saudi Arabia, which could help to establish national criteria for determining central obesity based on this simple anthropometric measurement.